Next steps in the Community Governance Initiative

By Simeon Oriko, Board Member, Swahilipot Hub

Without a community, Swahilipot Hub would not exist. I’m alive to this fact every time I sit down to work on Swahilipot initiatives.

When the idea for a Community Governance Initiative at SPH popped into my mind some time towards the end of 2017, I intended that community members would do two things: one, share their experiences on engaging with Swahilipot and two, participate in drafting and implementing ideas to grow and strengthen Swahilipot Hub and it’s members.

Let’s explore these two things for a second.

Early this year, we asked you, members of Swahilipot Hub, to fill out a survey that would enable us to listen to your thoughts, ideas and criticisms. 111 members filled out the survey – some people filled it twice! (Thank you).

Not only are we sharing the analysis, we’re also sharing with you the raw data – all the comments that were submitted for the survey.

So what next after the survey?

We need you to engage – develop and implement experiments to move SPH forward. Experiments that are successfully implemented will be kept as part of SPH’s operations.

Some community members criticized this process saying it would be all talk and no action. While there is place for constructive criticism, there is also place for action. The experiments that will be developed as a results of people’s ideas are the mechanism through which we will take action to improve Swahilipot Hub. I must emphasize, that this is wholly a community led process. I encourage you all to engage in the next phase of this process.

So, how do you engage in this next phase?

We’ve come up with 5 sub-committee’s through which experiments will be generated from and implemented through. They are as follows: